<Begin Segment 21>

TI: And so after that kind of stint as, in the office, you mentioned the Red Cross.

RT: Yeah, the Red Cross ladies were coming into Nagoya to set up a, their little office and recreation for the GIs, I think. And so we had, they wanted to go out and buy furniture and other things for the office, but like I said, Nagoya was just flat and so it was hard to even find carpentry stores and what the Americans wanted because Americans were bigger than the normal Japanese, so they had to get furniture, too. And so I went with the Red Cross ladies to interpret, to order the things for the office.

TI: And, and was this all paid work? Did they pay you to do these things?

RT: Yes. They, I can't remember, but the occupation forces did pay me, and I think that was one of the things, when I tried to return in April to go back to my girls' school, I had, they told me I had to flunk the grade and go down one step lower. And that was, I had heard that, or my parents had heard that it was because I was making more than the principal of the girls' school. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so there's some envy about that, about what you're doing.

RT: Jealousy or whatever. And so I decided I didn't want to go back to school and be humiliated having to go one grade lower than my friends, so I stayed and worked, and one, one of the places I worked was the military government team where, in Japan in those days the occupation forces had control over everything, so especially education. And these, they had, I think they had a grade school and a middle school in Nagoya, this Catholic German order, and the Catholic priest, Father Pache used to come to the military government team to talk to the education group 'cause he had just started the first coed college in Japan. And he, I was the receptionist in that office and he would see me there and he, one day he asked me how old I was, and I said, "I'm fifteen," and he said, "How come you're not in school?" And so I told him and he says, "Well, then you come to my foreign language college." So, and he had an ulterior motive, too. I think he wanted a typist. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so you had to work your way through school. Interesting. I, so I'm thinking about your family situation, so you had your aunt's farm to work, your dad could work at the mess hall...

RT: Yeah, so he wasn't helping at the farm anymore.

TI: Okay, and then you were able to get some jobs 'cause of your interpretation, so it sounds like your family was, in some ways, better off than other families, in terms of surviving.

RT: Yeah. Right, right after the war, yes.

TI: So how did the other families, when you think of your, the other families, girls your age and things like that, how did they survive during this time?

RT: I think their fathers, some of their fathers were coming back from the army or navy, wherever they were. Some lost their fathers, some lost their older brothers. It was a very sad time, I think it was. Food situation was terrible, but somehow, somehow we all survived.

TI: So was it a situation where there's a lot of, like in the United States you see a lot of homeless people, were there, like, people that were homeless?

RT: Oh yes. Oh yes, there was many, many homeless people. Yeah. And they would buy the leftovers from the GI mess halls and they would make it into soup or whatever and sell it on the black market. People were, and cigarettes that was tossed, I mean, people were collecting those and rolling it and selling it or, or smoking it themselves. I know after the war, the women, Japanese women were liberated and they were allowed to have cigarette rations just as, same as the men, and so my mother became very liberated and she started smoking. [Laughs]

SF: Do you recall any help that the families got from the Japanese community in the United States?

RT: Well, the Japanese community in the United States, all our, the people that my parents knew, they were just coming out of camp and they were all struggling, too, because their children, the older ones were probably in the army and when they got out they were going for the GI Bill and going to school, but they were all struggling and we did get a few care packages from the United States, from our friends, but no, it wasn't very good.

TI: And when was the first time you heard that the Japanese in the United States were put into camps? People in Salinas and places like that went to camps, when was the first time you heard about that?

RT: I think it's when this man came back on the boat during the war. Weren't there about two shiploads that came back? And I think one of his friends that was in the Heieki Gimusha Kai stopped by and told him about the situation.

TI: And do you recall what you thought when you heard about the camps?

RT: No.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.